Tapestry
by Aromene
Summary: Gertude was never very good at tapestry making, but the bright blue family tree of Durin's line was one of her mother's greatest creations. Her choice to save it from the ruins of Dale was by chance and memory only. She could never know how important it would one day become.


**Disclaimer: Reiterations of reiterations…I don't own Hobbit/Tolkien/etc. and am making no money off of this. As always, I do this for pure enjoyment's sake. By which I mean, my own, not yours.**

**AN: In perfect honesty this fic is so that I can reach half a million words on here before the end of the year. It's the only reason I wrote it, so I'm not quite certain how well it's going to read. If it's bad, then apparently writing for word counts is not one of my talents. I kind of already knew that.**

**My knowledge of tapestry making isn't great, as you might understand from reading this.**

**Yes, the first fic I wrote in response to Hobbit: DOS was _this. _What of it?**

xxx

Gertrude was not very good at tapestry making. Her mother often lamented this fact very loudly to the other ladies in the sewing circle, but since Gertrude was too young yet to marry and too old to be a child, she was expected to sit in circle each evening and sew. And so she did. Quietly and as carefully as she could manage, conscious of the fact that most likely her work would be unraveled by another sewer the next night or the next and redone.

Gertrude had higher hopes than being a second class tapestry maker. She often sat near her father's market stall and watched quietly as the mountain dwarves came to buy their wares. Most of them did not. Almost daily, loads of provisions were sent up the road to the mountain, but some dwarves came to Dale to trade and do business and these, at least, would stop for a bite to eat or a present for their wife or child back in Erebor. And many more of the female dwarves would come to call, eager to try the warm winter fashions her father made in sizes befitting a smaller folk. Gertrude was not allowed to talk to any of the dwarves, but she could sit and watch, at least, while they browsed the wares and spoke with her father.

Once, a dwarf woman in a beautiful dress had come to visit the stall with two others. It was sometimes hard to tell who was a dwarf female and who a dwarf male, but sometimes, when they wore such clothing as this one did, it was easy. Gertrude assumed it was someone of high stature. Her dress was embroidered with golden thread and jewels glinted about the neck. All the dwarves were wealthy, at least compared to most people in Dale, but Gertrude had never seen so many shiny things on a dress before. She stared at it all the while the dwarf female looked around the stall.

Her father seems more flustered than usual. He was trying very hard to sell his wares, despite the fact that they had had a reasonably good morning. He was also throwing compliments around more than she had ever heard. The dwarf seemed immune to all of it, but she was polite enough, if distant, as she inspected the goods and finally purchased a warm woolen shawl fit for the approaching winter. Gertrude's father seemed appalled by this, as it was not the prettiest thing for sale, but despite offering other things, the dwarf was adamant. He finally gave up trying, wrapping the shawl in brown packing paper and handing it to one of the other female dwarves. He took the few coins offered with a deep bow.

'Thank you for your business, Highness.'

The dwarf female smiled slightly and dipped her own head before leading her companions off down the market to another stall. Her father watched after them.

'That there was a princess of the mountain, Gertrude. You remember you've met one of them. I've never seen one of them of the royal family, except from afar.'

'A princess, Father?' Gertrude asked, looking after the dwarves herself.

Her father turned to look at her. 'You still don't know your dwarf history child? What do they teach you at that school anyhow?'

Not much, Gertrude wanted to say, but knew she should hold her tongue. 'I've forgotten it father. I was never good at history.'

The man sighed. 'Or many other things,' he muttered under his breath. 'That there,' he pointed down the market to where the three dwarf females were just disappearing around another stall, 'is Princess Dis, granddaughter of King Thror Under the Mountain. She's brother to Prince Thorin. You know about him don't you?'

'Yes father,' Gertrude said. Thorin she remembered from her lessons. She had been fascinated by him. Several of the young women in Dale admired him, though none of them were silly enough to believe he would ever go for a human girl. Dwarves married dwarves and women married men and that was the way it had always been. 'I know who Thorin is.'

'_Prince_ Thorin,' her father corrected, with another sigh and then distracted himself by helping a new customer.

_Princess Dis_, Gertrude thought to herself, remembering the most beautiful dress she had ever seen.

But that had been several years ago, back when Gertrude's sewing skills were less important than now. Now she was expected to assist her father and mother in their work. She could sew clothes not badly, for which her father was grateful, but her ability to make a tapestry worth selling was severely lacking. But every time she set thread to cloth she _tried_, she really did. It was just that the thread kept knotting and her stitches weren't even and it just never turned out how she wanted it to in her head.

Gertrude's mother finally gave up. 'You'll have to apprentice yourself to your father then, because you'll never be able to sell a single tapestry you make. Go on, off to the workshop with you and see you do better at dressmaking then you do at wall hangings.'

Secretly Gertrude was grateful for this and she loved working with her father. Patterns and sizes she could understand and simple stitches were easy enough. She let her mother and younger sister do the embroidery and kept to the basic stuff herself, under her father's watchful eye.

And then, one day, Princess Dis returned to their stall. Her father sold both clothing and the tapestries his wife made, though there were only ever a few of these on display. Often Gertrude's mother would make ones to order. The princess spent a great deal of time examining the few available at the stall and finally announced that she would like a tapestry commissioned for her mother's birthday.

Gertrude's father was only too pleased to agree, carefully writing down the requirements of size and colour and detail. Gertrude sat in the corner listening with interest. The princess wanted the family tree, which was not unusual. Several dwarves had sought such tapestries in the past, but she wanted it in brightest blue, which was an expensive thread to come by for weaving. Still, she was willing to pay and that was all Gertrude's father cared about.

It was Gertrude that was sent to the yarn maker the next day, to purchase the bright blue wool that would form the background of the tapestry. She walked home laden with a heavy bag of it, careful to ensure it did not get wet in the drizzle that was falling.

Over the next weeks she watched her mother set aside all other work in order to do the commission from the princess. Slowly it began to evolve each night as the blue spread across the wide surface and then was filled in here and there with names and flowers and other designs. Gertrude looked over her mother's shoulder and watched the family tree come into being. She had gone to the city library as soon as she could and memorized the whole tree so that if her mother needed help, Gertrude could supply the right name. But her mother did not need help with her history. Everyone in Dale knew the names of the ruling family of Erebor, back at least five generations.

The very last name her mother sewed into the tapestry was Thorin's, and Gertrude wished when it was finished that she had been good enough at the needle to help with it's making. It was one of the most beautiful and colourful tapestries her mother had ever made.

But Princess Dis did not come to retrieve her commission. The next day the fire breather came down from the north and Dale burned. Gertrude's father died in the market that day and only a chance errand spared Gertrude her own life. When the survivors were left to collect what they could before moving south to a safer distance from the mountain, Gertrude took the tapestry with her, carefully wrapped in paper. It was no use to them, a wall covering for a house they would not have for years to come, of a family tree that was now in ashes, but Gertrude could not leave it behind. She passed it on to her daughter before she died, but it never hung in their house. And her daughter passed it on and on again. For hundred and seventy years.

When his wife, Gertrude's descendent died, Bard sold the tapestry to the merchant around the corner. He had no need of it and more need of the money. It was just an old relic of a lost time and no one cared about the family tree of the dwarves who once ruled in the north.

Until _he_ returned.


End file.
